Project Octopath Traveller

[Hero-of-Time]

22 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Octopath Traveller has sold nearly double of Bravely Default's first week sales in the UK.

Here's the source.

It's reassuring to know that there's a real thirst for old-school Turn Based RPG's these days. They're quite the rarity now and I am always a little concerned with how the industry has been moving away from them.

I see it sold about 10k which I suppose is the best you can hope for the UK market. I think Xenoblade Chronicles 2 outsold it during it's first week but then that's an established franchise and received a big push from Nintendo. 

Like you i'm happy to see that a turn based JRPG has done well over here and hopefully it has repeated this success in other countries. I know S-E had to issue an apology over the lack of stock over in Japan but this may be because of the game being under shipped.

With Captain Toad now out of the way ( at least the Switch version ),  I will finally start this once I get in from work. I'm still not sure who I will start the game as. I'll probably just have a look at the characters and see who is the coolest.  I did play as Prim on the first demo but didn't really care for her so at least that's one character I can rule out.

[Sheikah]

38 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I see it sold about 10k which I suppose is the best you can hope for the UK market. I think Xenoblade Chronicles 2 outsold it during it's first week but then that's an established franchise and received a big push from Nintendo. 

Like you i'm happy to see that a turn based JRPG has done well over here and hopefully it has repeated this success in other countries. I know S-E had to issue an apology over the lack of stock over in Japan but this may be because of the game being under shipped.

With Captain Toad now out of the way ( at least the Switch version ),  I will finally start this once I get in from work. I'm still not sure who I will start the game as. I'll probably just have a look at the characters and see who is the coolest.  I did play as Prim on the first demo but didn't really care for her so at least that's one character I can rule out.

In my opinion, at least going by Bravely Default, Square-Enix have regressed somewhat when they're making these games. Remember games like Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX - they had the awesome turn-based battles but they also had great characters, plot, and environments. Bravely Default was incredibly muted when it came to characters and the story was paper thin, and the environments they designed were nothing much. It feels like they're going too old-school now with games with the amount of plot and feel of the early Final Fantasy games rather than the more sophisticated (but still turn based) later FF games.

I reckon if they can figure out what they did in those later FF games and increase their budget for these spin offs they can surely make more entertaining and appealing games that sell more.

 

Edited July 17, 2018 by Sheikah

[Hero-of-Time]

It took my ages to decide which character to start as. I hate having to make choices like this. You should have seen me trying to sort out which character would have which jobs in Final Fantasy XII. It took me nearly a week to start the thing! Luckily in this the starting music is beautiful, so it did make the process a little less stressful. After sitting for 20 mins I finally decided to go with Tressa. I figured it would be fun playing as a merchant. I wonder if it will be like playing as Torneko in DQ? 

[Sméagol]

7 hours ago, Sheikah said:

I reckon if they can figure out what they did in those later FF games and increase their budget for these spin offs they can surely make more entertaining and appealing games that sell more.

I think that's really all there is to it.

I mean I love Octopath, but I have a few minor nitpicks, all which would have been no problem with some more polish and therefore I slightly higher budget. One of these nitpicks is npc's having the same default dialogue under normal circumstances regardless of whic character you're currently playing as. For example, Tressa's parents treat her as any other character when you're simply shopping. Some custom dialogue would have been nice, and this applies to loads of npc's.

[Hero-of-Time]

It's a bit pants that the game doesn't have the record feature enabled.  Hopefully they will patch it in.

[Hero-of-Time]

I've only put a couple of hours into the game but I love what I've played so far. I was happy that Tressa's story allowed for battling early on. This let me get my exp grind on straight away and as such I sat in the very first area and got her up to level 10. Needless to say that when it did come to fighting the first boss that I buried him pretty quickly.  

Thr first couple of skills I unlocked were Rest and Hired Help. Rest lets me restore my HP and SP while Hired Help allows me to use money in battle to call in a NPC to do some damage. It seems the higher the payout, the better the NPC and damage that is dished out.

I love the battle system. It does play very much like Bravely Default in that you can play the game tactically by waiting for the right moment to unleash your Battle Points. Also, I find it very satisfying when you uncover an enemy weakness. It's gonna be hard not to go back to those earlier enemies just to uncover all of those hidden weakness boxes.

The music so far has been superb. The battle music has just the right amount of energy to it and the limited bits of world map pieces that I have heard are very soothing and relaxing.

Yup, I'm liking very much what I've seen so far of the game and I've only scratched the surface of what's on offer here.

Time to finally leave my first town area and head towards my next character. I think I'll head towards Olberic to add some muscle to my team.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Hero-of-Time

[RedShell]

18 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It's a bit pants that the game doesn't have the record feature enabled.  Hopefully they will patch it in.

It’s always disappointing to discover a Switch game that doesn’t feature recording (I was annoyed it wasn’t in Mercenary Kings most recently) but especially for any newer releases since that system update. Surely all new games should include the feature now.  

Anyway, nice to see people are enjoying Octopath Traveller and that it’s doing well. I wish it was the type of game I could enjoy on a similar level, but as it stands I’m happy to wait for a potential sale or just skip it altogether.

[Ronnie]

This is tempting, but I really don't think I'd get on with JRPGs, especially the random battles. Still, so tempting.

[Glen-i]

1 hour ago, Ronnie said:

This is tempting, but I really don't think I'd get on with JRPGs, especially the random battles. Still, so tempting.

I probably wouldn't in your shoes. If the random battles annoy you that much, you're not gonna make it through.

[Sméagol]

1 hour ago, Ronnie said:

This is tempting, but I really don't think I'd get on with JRPGs, especially the random battles. Still, so tempting.

It wouldn't be any different if they weren't random. You need the experience for the bosses and difficult optional areas anyway. One of the support skills actually reduces the encounters, and it's the only support skill I haven't equipped as it's pretty useless.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Sméagol

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, Ronnie said:

This is tempting, but I really don't think I'd get on with JRPGs, especially the random battles. Still, so tempting.

As Glen said, I'd give the game a miss if random battles aren't your thing. You'll be thrown into them every 10-15 seconds while exploring the map and dungeons. 

Is it just the frequency of the random battles that you don't like?

[Ronnie]

26 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

As Glen said, I'd give the game a miss if random battles aren't your thing. You'll be thrown into them every 10-15 seconds while exploring the map and dungeons. 

Is it just the frequency of the random battles that you don't like?

Hard to narrow down what it is exactly. I get that the whole point is to level up and so they're necessary, I guess I just prefer action RPGs.

[Hero-of-Time]

9 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Hard to narrow down what it is exactly. I get that the whole point is to level up and so they're necessary, I guess I just prefer action RPGs.

Totally understandable. Random battles aren't for everyone and developers know this which is why so many JRPGs have ditched the system in favour of more action based battles and the ability to see enemies on the screen.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Hero-of-Time

[RedShell]

I think the main reason I dislike random battles is because they can really pull me out of the exploration aspect, killing the vibe of the game in the process. For example, exploring a creepy looking dungeon in an RPG is something I definitely enjoy, love it actually. Soaking up the surroundings and the atmosphere, it’s great stuff.  

When you really get into an experience like that, and then it’s abruptly interrupted by a random battle, the illusion is shattered. It quite literally rips you out of the game world and all of a sudden any connection you had to it is gone, momentarily at least.

Also, (and this one is probably exclusive to me and my short attention span ) it often causes me to lose my bearings, so once the battle is over I’ve even forgotten which direction I was traveling in beforehand. Then I might be going back where I was coming from originally, and by the time I realise and chage direction again, 2 or 3 more random battles as punishment!  

[Ike]

They didn't add a Bravely Default style random encounter rate slider after feedback from the first demo? I thought they had for some reason.

[Hero-of-Time]

11 hours ago, Ike said:

They didn't add a Bravely Default style random encounter rate slider after feedback from the first demo? I thought they had for some reason.

I would have liked to have seen things like that and the auto battle option brought over from the BD series. They were such good additions, especially when it came to grinding.

I put some more time into this last night and managed to finish off Olberic's first chapter. I spent a lot of time just going around the village and picking fights with people in order to level him up. I kept leaving and entering the village to respawn the villagers which also had the nice side effect of granting me with a bunch of cash due to Tressa's skill of randomly finding money. I got him to level 10 and then pushed on with his story. 

After that, I then decided that I could do with a mage on my team and headed off to recruit Cyrus. I quite enjoyed the opening to his story. It felt like I was playing a very simple detective game. Once I got his prologue out of the way, and then joined up with Tressa and Olberic, I then went forward to the cave area to do some grinding. I had an episode of Supernatural to catch up on so I sat and watched that while I had the characters walking back and forth just randomly engaging in battle. It was great.  

My team at the moment is...

Tressa - Level 17 with Collect, Donate BP, Rest, Trade Winds and Hired Help
Olberic - Level 16 with Abide, Cross Strike, Stout Wall and Level Slash.
Cyrus - Level 11 with Fireball, Blizzard, Ice Wind and Lightning Blast

I refuse to move on with a character's story until they are at least level 13. I'm still kicking about in the opening chapter of Cyrus and once he has reached level 13 then I will continue the story and fight the boss of this chapter.

EDIT: Oh, I came across a Cait yesterday evening. I'm going to assume they are like Metal Slimes from the DQ games and dish out big amounts of gold and exp because the thing dodged my attack and then ran away as soon as it got the chance. I did take a snap of it but I forgot to upload it before coming to work. 

Edited July 19, 2018 by Hero-of-Time

[Glen-i]

Yeah, @Hero-of-Time those are the Metal Slimes. I've managed to kill one so far, but their evasion is nutso and they never have any spells listed as their weakness.

I've started Chapter 3 now. Had a tough time with H'aanit's Chapter 2 Boss. Really cool gimmick that kept me right on my toes. Took me a good ten minutes before I Leten my Arrow Flyeth True and clinched it!

I find that the characters who have really good capabilities are Cyrus, Tressa, Therion and Ophilia.

Ophilia has really potent healing skills, Cyrus can cover a lot of elements, Tressa's Donate BP is probably one of the best moves in the game and Therion basically gets infinite SP with Steal SP, which can also hit enemies twice in one turn.

Thanks to the secondary jobs, everyone can have everything though, so no-one feels useless. I've been rotating in my lowest level characters as I play.

[Ronnie]

Ok much as I appreciated the advice that suggested otherwise, I ended up caving and ordering this for tomorrow. Watching a video that went over battle mechanics on Kotaku sold me on it. It looked pretty interesting. Whether it's as interesting 40 hours in, I'm not sure but I'm willing to give it a go.

[Glen-i]

12 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Ok much as I appreciated the advice that suggested otherwise, I ended up caving and ordering this for tomorrow. Watching a video that went over battle mechanics on Kotaku sold me on it. It looked pretty interesting. Whether it's as interesting 40 hours in, I'm not sure but I'm willing to give it a go.

Only kidding, hope you manage to look past the random encounters.
Here's a tip, running with the B button increases the encounter rate. So it's techncally quicker to walk.

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Only kidding, hope you manage to look past the random encounters.
Here's a tip, running with the B button increases the encounter rate. So it's techncally quicker to walk.

Wow thanks for the tip haha. Sure it'll be fine for me.

[Hero-of-Time]

3 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Ok much as I appreciated the advice that suggested otherwise, I ended up caving and ordering this for tomorrow. Watching a video that went over battle mechanics on Kotaku sold me on it. It looked pretty interesting. Whether it's as interesting 40 hours in, I'm not sure but I'm willing to give it a go.

I think I watched the same video before deciding to open the game. They done a really good job of explaining things and after starting the game I found its not complicated at all.

Have you thought about who you will start with or are you just going to wing it and see who takes your fancy once you fire it up?

[Sméagol]

29 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Wow thanks for the tip haha. Sure it'll be fine for me.

Cyrus is the one with the lower encounter rate support skills, you may want to start with him in that case. Though like I said, you need the experience (and gold by the way) eventually, but this gives you more control over when you fight. Like I said, it's the only support skill I'm not using myself. You can fast travel out of hairy situations. I mean, I presume, fast travel is also something I haven't used myself. You can also skip the chests to reduce encounters even more, but the downside to that is obvious. There are many sidepaths leading to chests, but mostly you'll know when you're on the main route to your destination or one of those sidepaths. Though so far, I can't remember getting something exceptional out of them.

[Hero-of-Time]

2 minutes ago, Sméagol said:

Cyrus is the one with the lower encounter rate support skills, you may want to start with him in that case. Though like I said, you need the experience (and gold by the way) eventually, but this gives you more control over when you fight. Like I said, it's the only support skill I'm not using myself. You can fast travel out of hairy situations. I mean, I presume, fast travel is also something I haven't used myself. You can also skip the chests to reduce encounters even more, but the downside to that is obvious. There are many sidepaths leading to chests, but mostly you'll know when you're on the main route to your destination or one of those sidepaths. Though so far, I can't remember getting something exceptional out of them.

Yeah, the lower encounter ability is something I have yet the need to equip. It's nice that it's there though. It will come in handy if you want to just explore for a while without getting drawn into as many battles.

I love the auto ability Cyrus has that lets you scope out enemy weaknesses. I have yet to learn the one where you can active it battle because the auto one seems to do the job.

Tressa as my starter has worked out well for me due to the increase in cash that you get while using her. This in turn allows you to get better equipment from the stores without the need for scrimping and saving.

[Glen-i]

1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I love the auto ability Cyrus has that lets you scope out enemy weaknesses. I have yet to learn the one where you can active it battle because the auto one seems to do the job.

Boosting Analyse lets you reveal multiple weaknesses at once. Great for getting the jump on bosses.

[Sméagol]

10 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Yeah, the lower encounter ability is something I have yet the need to equip. It's nice that it's there though. It will come in handy if you want to just explore for a while without getting drawn into as many battles.

I love the auto ability Cyrus has that lets you scope out enemy weaknesses. I have yet to learn the one where you can active it battle because the auto one seems to do the job.

Tressa as my starter has worked out well for me due to the increase in cash that you get while using her. This in turn allows you to get better equipment from the stores without the need for scrimping and saving.

I actually do use the analyze skill. I love getting a free reveal, but it doesn't reveal everything in one go, so analyze speeds things up. It also reveals HP. You also don't have much of an option with bosses. I prefer not to "experiment", and waste my time doing things that aren't effective. And expecially with bosses it's nice to know the remaining HP once in a while, though you have other less reliable methods for that.

As for Tressa.. I love the hired help skill. In fact, I love all the "recruit npc's" skills. I actually wasted a lot of money in the forest area where you get H'aanith, by constanty hiring the dude who hits all enemies with an axe. A lot of forest enemies were weak to axes, and this usually cleared all of them in one go.

Edited July 19, 2018 by Sméagol